Update: I just found a ton of JIRAs for issues related to the same issues I was having, so this bug is more widespread than I thought, and not just Mac centric.
The newest Firestorm beta has just been released that also contains this bug, so this might start effecting lots of people. Symptoms can vary, such as TP’s fail or crash you, friends list never loads, (shows loading) you can’t IM someone (but they can IM you) you can’t open profiles, groups do wierd things, can’t see or upload mesh or can’t edit objects or have trouble creating objects or saving objects. It can seem like you aren’t fully connected to the grid. See the instructions below to change your DNS to Google’s as a workaround so you can continue to enjoy SL while they work on fixing the bug.
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I see quite a few people complaining on Plurk that the official Second Life Viewer2/Viewer3 is very laggy for them. This may help, it’s worth a shot. And it might improve your internet speed overall (or so I read, if that’s wrong and you know better, chime in).
I was having some DNS related bugs on the newer set of viewers 2.7 and above, and the workaround is setting my DNS to use Google’s DNS. My original problems seemed to be more Mac centric, though there were some Vista users. BUT! whatever the DNS related bugs, it could be affecting other people in different ways. So, worth a shot I think?
If this does work, please leave a comment! And if it doesn’t work, leave a comment, too. And if you just want to say Hi, leave a comment 
HOW TO’S
MAC (Mac first, sorry I’m biased)
- Open ‘System Preferences’ -> ‘Network’ -> ‘Advanced…’ -> ‘DNS’
- Click “+” and type 8.8.8.8
- Click “+” and type 8.8.4.4
- Close ‘System Preferences’
- Restart Second Life
Here’s a pic of the relevant windows on Mac:
Windows
I can’t guarantee this workflow b/c I’m not a PC but it covers XP, vista and 7 here:
http://rajkishor09.hubpages.com/hub/Speed-Up-Internet-with-Google-Public-DNS
Linux - I assume you know how to change your DNS, change it to:
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
This, very much so. I had this exact issue with Viewer 3 (and the new Firestorm based on it.) Meanwhile, older copies of Firestorm worked just fine. Swapping DNS servers solved the problem right up.
Thank you so much. I’ve been unable to use Firestorm mesh since the beta was released, and though people on Phoenix/Firestorm support group tried to help, I haven’t seen a solution yet. This worked like a dream.
i can’t believe it…this 8888 etc thing seems to be working for me….i am over 15 mins in Firestorm. already…
(mac lion user… only lasted 3 mins max, …then could not move and got the option to ‘view I’m/chat or log out’
don’t really understand this dns stuff, i actually went looking for it in prefs in the viewer rather than on my mac!!
have i changed this for all the internet or added an option for second life?
my second life av is ‘ann bogbat’
Hi Ann,
Glad it’s working for you!
It does change your connection to the entire Internet, but there’s nothing bad about using the free Google DNS. It’s reportedly better than most people’s ISP’s DNS service (which is what you use by default unless you change it) I know personally our old ISP’s DNS gave us major problems; our current DNS was working pretty good except for this SL problem.
One time a few months ago (I’ve been using this DNS workaround for SL for many months now) I had a strange error pertaining to the internet and my DNS settings. I cleared out the google DNS settings, rebooted, added them back, and everything worked fine again.
I’m not really sure what the bug is, but it’s obviously SL related, and only newer viewers seem to have the bug. FWIW I think this is part of the reason people have been staying on Phoenix and say the newer viewers are unusable for them. If you hear about anyone else with issues with Firestorm or official LL viewer, pass on the word for this solution. I only stumbled upon it by chance, and didn’t see it documented fully anywhere so that’s why I wrote this post.
This DNS changed fixed my issues (no friends list-no groups list) with mac version Firestorm 3.2.2.2.24336
Thank you
I had problems in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with IMs, Contact and Group lists, Avatar rezz… and with this DNS change it was fixed! Yay!
Thanks everybody for the comments, I’m glad to see it’s helping people!
Thanks a lot – I really wanted to move on from Phoenix – Firestorm worked at first but then all went wrong. DNS changes did the trick
) – Got friends and IM back, and now Firestorm loads in a sec 